Conduct Law Unfair To Gays, Attorney Says

Texas homosexual-conduct law unfairly targets gay people and invades their
privacy, an attorney for two men challenging the law argued Wednesday to appeals court
judges.

But Harris County Assistant District Attorney Bill Delmore countered that lawmakers
have the power to ban certain behaviors and the law does not single out homosexuals, only
homosexual acts.

The arguments before the three-judge panel of the 14th Court of Appeals were the first
big step in the challenge to the law started by John Geddes Lawrence, 56, and Tyrone
Garner, 32.

In September 1998, police entered Lawrences home and found the men engaging in
consensual sex. They were charged with "deviant homosexual conduct," a Class C
misdemeanor.

The officers entered the home after a third man falsely reported an armed intruder was
there.

The men pleaded no contest in a justice of the peace court and later in a Harris County
Criminal Court-at-Law so they could challenge the law, which is the first such appeal to
come out of a Texas criminal court.

Lawrence and Garner, who were in the courtroom Wednesday, have vowed to take the case
to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and, if necessary, to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The appeals courtroom was packed with law students and other observers.

Paul Murphy, chief justice of the 14th Court of Appeals, was joined by judges John
Anderson and J. Harvey Hudson on the panel.

Representing the men were their local lawyer, Mitchell Katine, and Ruth Harlow, an
attorney with the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund Inc., a gay rights advocacy
group.

Harlow argued that the law violates privacy rights and is unconstitutional,
discriminatory and "criminalizes" homosexual behavior for which heterosexuals
would not be jailed.

She stressed that because the law singles out homosexual acts, it singles out gays and
therefore violates the equal-protection clauses in the U.S. Constitution and the Texas
Constitution.

The law also violates the right to privacy in the home and in the decisions people make
in their intimate relationships, Harlow said.

Lawrence and Garner dont contend that the entrance police made into
Lawrences home was illegal, but they say the officers should have left when they saw
there was no armed intruder and that the sex the men were engaged in was consensual.

Harlow asked the panel to declare the law unconstitutional and vacate the convictions
of her clients.

Delmore countered that the courts have held that federal and state equal-protection
clauses do not apply to homosexuals because they do not have special, legally recognized
status.

Delmore said homosexual acts are not protected by the federal or state constitutions
and that since they have always been deemed inappropriate by Texas law, then enforcing the
law does not violate privacy. If moral standards change, he said, the Legislature is the
place to change the law, not the courts.

Besides, the law does not single out gays, Delmore said, because it also applies to
bisexuals or heterosexuals who engage in homosexual acts.

Harlow scoffed at that, likening it to passing a law against Catholics going to Mass
and then arguing that it didnt target Catholics.

According to Lambda, only Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas specifically outlaw
homosexual behavior. Twelve states ban certain sex acts between same and different-sex
partners.

Harlow said courts have struck down "sodomy laws" in Tennessee, Georgia,
Louisiana and Montana based on privacy concerns, and similar laws in Kentucky and Maryland
were stricken based on equal-protection grounds.

The law is rarely enforced in Texas, where such a statute has been on the books in one
form or another for about 120 years. In 1973, lawmakers essentially took heterosexual
couples out of the equation and said it was OK for them to engage in certain sex acts that
were illegal for homosexuals to practice.